Every trial lawyer is taught not to ask any question that he or she does not already know the answer to.  So every question is asked for a reason, to get the witness to give the answer that the lawyer already knows is coming.    The exception to that rule might be when any answer could be used to the lawyer’s advantage.  That’s what’s called a trick question.

 

It was a trick question they asked Jesus that day – is it lawful to pay taxes?  They didn’t really care if he said Yes or No because either way would work to their advantage.  The “they” in this case is an unexpected, unlikely alliance between the Herodians and the Pharisees.  The Herodians supported the reign of the Herod family, which ruled Israel under the over-arching reign of the Emperor.  To support Herod was to support Rome and the tax.  The Pharisees were the liberal religious leaders of their day.  They were committed to the idea that every person could faithfully observe the traditional religious practices that were part of the covenant with God.  This intense religious practice enhanced Jewish cultural identity and was, in its own way, also a form of resistance to Rome.  The Herodians and the Pharisees did not agree on almost anything else, but apparently they did agree that Jesus was a threat.  So they sought to trap him with this question.  They thought they were asking a yes or no question.  If he said “Yes, it is lawful to pay taxes,” he would appear to be a traitor to his own people, who resented the oppression and occupation of Rome. If he said, “No, it is not lawful to pay taxes” he might be arrested for treason.

 

It was a dangerous trap for Jesus. His opponents thought that any answer he gave would work to their advantage, but once again, Jesus was quick-witted and clever.  His answer might be his best-known sound bite “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” 

 

It might be one of his best-known sayings, but like many of his sayings, it is a bit cryptic and mysterious.  It sounds good and it got him out of the trap, but what does it really mean?

 

Historically, it has sometimes been understood to mean that the Caesar’s domain and God’s domain are completely separate, that Christians have one allegiance to the government and a separate allegiance to God and that never the twain shall meet.  People use this sound bite to suggest that political topics should never be addressed from the pulpit or that Christians should keep their faith out of the public square.

 

If we take a step back from this sound bite and look at the context, I think it’s clear that is not what Jesus means.  This conversation took place during Holy Week, the last week of Jesus’ life.   The gospel writers are careful to tell us that Jesus was in Jerusalem that week deliberately.  He knew it was dangerous, but he went anyway.  And while he was there, he did some things that made it even more dangerous.  On Sunday, you remember, that he entered the city on a donkey with a parade.  That was a demonstration against Rome.  It was his way of mocking the pomp and circumstance of their displays of power and might.  On Monday, he went into the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers.  That was a protest against the corruption of the religious authorities, their abuse of power, and oppression of the faithful.  This conversation about paying taxes takes place in the Temple on Tuesday.  Jesus has just put himself at great risk by leading two protests, two demonstrations, against the political and religious powers of his time.  And in three days, when Jesus is executed, one of the false charges against him will be that he opposed paying taxes to Caesar.   It just doesn’t make any sense for him to be teaching that faithful people should keep their religious lives in a separate compartment. 

 

They ask him the question about whether it is legal to pay taxes and Jesus says, “Show me the coin used for the tax.”  Jesus doesn’t pull the coin out of his own pocket, but asks them for one.  They produce one right away.  Jesus has already called them hypocrites and here’s the evidence that they deserve that charge.  The coin that they produce is a denarius.  It is a Roman coin which has a picture of the Emperor Tiberius and proclaims him to be the “son of the divine Augustus”.  Coins with Roman images and inscriptions were not allowed in the temple because they violated the commandment about making graven images.  There were Jewish coins which did not violate that commandment, but these religious and secular authorities brought out a Roman coin within the Temple gates.  The fact that they had no trouble doing so shows exactly where their true allegiance was.

 

Some of us might remember the movie Jerry Maguire about a professional football player and his agent.  In the most memorable scene in the movie, the two main characters get into a heated argument over their contract. By the end of the scene, they are both shouting the mantra, "Show me the money! Show me the money! Show me the money!"

 

That’s what Jesus says . . .  “Show me the money.  Show me the Roman money that gives away the fact that you’ve already bought into their system, that you’re already living life on the empire’s terms.  Show me the money.  Show me the money trail, the quid pro quo, the back room deals, the collusion between religion and politics for the sake of holding on to your power.” 

 

Jesus is saying something about faith and politics, but it is something about the power of institutional religion and government authority in collusion with each other.  He is speaking against the religious people who align themselves with secular powers, who embrace ideologies counter to the gospel in order to maintain their authority and status and power.  I wonder, if we could interview some of those religious leaders and ask them why they made the compromises they did, why they tolerated the desecration of the Temple in support of Rome, why they broke their own understandings of the commandments, I wonder what they would say?  I expect they would say the kinds of things that people often say in these situations.  They might say that it had started out with minor concessions, minor compromises and then pretty soon it escalated and they didn’t know how to get out, or didn’t want out badly enough to give up power.  I wonder if they might say that they were only trying to protect the institution.  I think we heard that just this week, didn’t we?  Those in leadership at Penn State who should have known better, but kept quiet for the alleged good of the university.  That exact same scenario happens in churches too – people keep quiet, cover things up, thinking that they are protecting the church.  Sisters and brothers, I don’t believe God needs or wants that kind of protection. 

 

A few days ago, I found myself behind a car with a lot of bumper stickers.  In big letters, one sticker said “Real Christians . . .”  That was on the top line.  I could see that there was another line, but it was in smaller type.  I kept working my way closer to see what it said and finally I could read it “Real Christians don’t vote for a certain political party.”  Well, I’m not sure it was worth all the maneuvering I did to get close enough to read that, but it satisfied my curiosity.  I hadn’t seen that sticker before, and I can imagine other neighborhoods where the popular sticker would have said, “Real Christians don’t vote for the other party.”  Which sticker would Jesus endorse?  I think both.  Not to say that we shouldn’t vote, but I think Jesus would still warn us about the dangers of aligning ourselves too closely with any ideology or political party or power.   

 

Jesus did not live in a democracy.  He was the citizen of an occupied nation.  “When the early church read this story, they knew how hard this answer was.  When they were forced to choose between God and Caesar, they ended up in the coliseum with the lions.”[1]  Our context is different.  We enjoy rights and privileges Jesus and those early Christians didn’t have – like the right to free speech, the freedom from government interference in religion, and the power to vote.  Jesus was the citizen of a nation occupied by the superpower of his time.  We are the citizens of the superpower of our time, the nation that occupies other nations militarily and culturally.  It is in light of that context that we have to struggle with the provocative and still relevant question of what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar.   As Marcus Borg says, “. . . What if Caesar is Hitler, or apartheid, or communism, or global capitalism?”[2]

 

Christians have been on the right and wrong sides of every important political issue in history – the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the gay rights movement and various wars are just a few that come to mind.  It can be very hard to separate ourselves from our allegiance to our nation or culture, very hard to discern the best ways to engage our political system at any given time.  I have more questions than answers on these issues myself.  (Like, what does it really mean that our money says “in God we trust”?)

 

But I find there are still more clues in this clever conversation that Jesus had that day.  When they pulled out the coin, Jesus said, “Tell me, whose image is on it?”  The answer was “Caesar”.  It had Caesar’s image on it, so Jesus said it belonged to Caesar.  That word “image” would have set off certain echoes for Jesus’ listeners.  Echoes of Genesis 1: 27 where it says “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Or Genesis 5:1 “This is the list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God.”  If the coin with Caesar’s image belongs to Caesar, then perhaps Jesus is also saying that human beings, who all bear God’s image, belong to God. 

 

And there’s one more echo, in that sound bite, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”  Psalm 24 says “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;”   If the earth and that is within it belongs to God, then what rightfully belongs to Caesar?  Nothing. 

 

It sounds easy – everything, especially human beings, belongs to God, nothing belongs to Caesar.  Even I can do that math.  So then why is this so hard? 

 

Thomas R. Kelly was a Quaker missionary, educator, speaker, writer and scholar. In A Testament of Devotion, he wrote:

“We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us. Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves. . . . And each of our selves is in turn a rank individualist, not cooperative but shouting out his vote loudly for himself when the voting time comes. . . . It is as if we have a chairman of our committee of many selves within us who does not integrate the many into one but who merely counts the votes at each decision, and leaves disgruntled minorities. . . . We are not integrated. We are distraught. We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. . . . Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center. . . . Most of us, I fear, have not surrendered all else, in order to attend to the Holy Within.”[3]

 

Jesus, and Thomas Kelly, are saying that our primary allegiance, first and foremost, is to God.  Above all else, we belong to God.   It becomes difficult when we align ourselves with other agendas, when we get caught in someone else’s fight, when we do the right thing for the wrong reason, when we forget whose image we bear.    

 

So let us remember, when we are conflicted about our duty to our country, we belong to God.  When we feel pulled to support that cause and help those people, we belong to God.  When we struggle with the right thing to do, we belong to God.  When we love our neighbor as ourselves and seek justice for the stranger, we belong to God.   Let us cease all our striving, let us be still and know that we belong to God.  Amen.